Customers’ pics

It’s always good to get pics of customers’ bikes out in the wild. Here are a few that have arrived in the past few weeks.

Lance’s Honda CB1300 was one of the most advanced specials I worked on this year – a really high quality build, and a big electrical challenge. Adam, my apprentice, made several versions of a transistorised gadget to make the fuel level gauge work, but we got there eventually. Lance had more grief trying to set up the Stack dash. It’s beautiful to look at, but in the end he switched to a purpose-built motorcycle device. More on Lance’s CB1300 here.

The pic, taken at the recent Worship Show in Leeds, is not one of Lance’s. It’s by another customer, Richard, whose Ducati TT F2 was in the show as well.

Richard’s own bike left the Rupe’s rewires workshop with no front indicators. Normally I’m very happy to make up brackets and spacers to fit aftermarket parts, but Richard’s fabulous Ducati has a hand-laid race fairing, and not one square inch of the sides where you would mount the indicators was vertical. Solving that issue was going to take a long time, and Richard would be just as good at it. He sent the pic of his bike with its new front indicators, mounted on custom-chamfered spacers. All being well, this ex-race Ducati TT F2 will appear in a spring issue of Classic Bike. More on Richard’s bike here.

Joe’s 1972 BSA 650T was finished a couple of years ago. He’s had the same problems as I have with my 650: if you don’t ride it, the sodding Amal carb blocks its pilot jet and associated drilling, and it won’t start. (Or even if it does start, it won’t run off choke until it gets on the needle.) All carb bikes suffer from pilot jet blockage due to ethanol in the fuel slurping up atmospheric water and forming a kind of white salt that lodges in small holes. It’s just that the Amal 928 carb is uniquely vulnerable/infuriating/useless. The modern world has solved many of the problems which the factory-fresh BSA 650s suffered from. But in this case it’s invented a new one. More on Joe’s BSA 650T here.

The Cagiva 650 Elefant belongs to regular customer Gavin. Gavin loves his desert race Cagivas, possibly because he used to do some contracting work for the factory. In fact, he loves building Italian-based specials of all sorts. But this one is largely standard. It’s a part restoration, with new paint, a rebuilt motor (complete with kickstart), and many rare bits tracked down. More on this bike here. More on one of Gavin’s other Cagiva Elefants, which he’s making into a race replica, here. More on his remarkable Bimota 500 two-stroke Squalo here.